Category ‘Mobile’

The base of every good app is performance. No user is willing to use an app with subpar performance, especially not with the amount of apps on the Play Store and thereby possible alternatives. In this post, we will take a look at some of the basics of Android UI performance and some of the pitfalls.

Layout Hierarchies

All Android UI are based on XML files describing the desired design. Developers are easily carried away by nesting several instances of different elements like <LinearLayout> or <RelativeLayout> to solve a layout puzzle. This can be a potential performance problem, since each elements require initialization, layout and drawing. We are talking milliseconds here, but with several layouts on-screen using, for example a <ListView>, these milliseconds get multiplied and noticeable delay could occur. Read the rest of this entry »

The international software development conference GOTO, designed for software developers, IT architects and project managers was back on June 18th-20th at the Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam. Trifork, GOTO Academy and Axon had each a stand there.

On June 26th-27th Allard Buijze gave a training on the Axon framework. On July 10th we held a Docker MeetUp in our Trifork office in Amsterdam. Below we relate these events and provide further information about upcoming trainings and more.

When developing apps for mobile phones you want to offer your users the best user experience. Sometimes this includes showing information outside of your app, in another app. Up until recently, there was no real good way to do this. Luckily, now there is a new initiative App Links that provides an open source and cross-platform solution for app-to-app linking. The initiative is supported by many mobile app developers, like Dropbox, Facebook, Spotify and Pinterest. In this post I will show you an example how to link between two Android applications using the open source implementation for Android Bolts. However, the same principles apply when you want to link between two iOS applications.

For years now, PC/Desktops have been present in the classroom providing children and students digital learning environments. These learning environments are helping the teachers by providing interactive learning aids where children and students can independently work and learn. In primary schools, classrooms are filled with just a couple of PCs in order to allow children to learn how to use a computer. Many of these PCs include special software written specifically for kids, where they can learn to practice basic mathematics, writing, language, etc. Most of the time these PCs are not even connected to the Internet, because of the nature of the applications and run on local machines. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the second part of my blog on how to develop an application using Elasticsearch, Spring MVC and Sencha Touch 2. In my previous blog post part 1 I showed and explained which technologies I used to accomplish the connection between the frontend and backend. In addition I presented the steps to connect a database service (Elasticsearch) with a Spring MVC service. Part 2 will continue the development, in particular the connection between Sencha Touch 2 and the Spring MVC projects. Finally, I will show how to deploy the developed application into the cloud.

What are directives?

To start with Angular Directives we must first know what Google's Angular team defines as directives, so I copied a little piece form their website and I'll comment on that.

"At a high level, directives are markers on a DOM element (such as an attribute, element name, or CSS class) that tell AngularJS's HTML compiler ($compile) to attach a specified behavior to that DOM element or even transform the DOM element and its children."

To continue my previous blog, iOS Development Tips & Tricks - Part I, in which I explain what tools I think are best to use for iOS development, I want to dive more into the actual code and tell you about my most used and therefore favourite frameworks in iOS.

We are glad to announce that we have now an AngularJS training available at GOTO Academy and new iOS trainings scheduled!

AngularJS (1,2 or 3 days) - New

Become an expert in AngularJS with this three-day in-depth training course. The first day covers on AngularJS basics, and requires no prior experience with AngularJS. The second day covers more advanced topics, while the third day focuses on the most difficult and advanced aspect of AngularJS, namely directives. More info and register. Read the rest of this entry »

The GOTO Academy is organising regular training sessions around professional software development and architecture.

We are currently running a New Year promo: 20% discount on the iOS trainings.

Take advantage of it! Use the voucher code: TRIFORK2014 to book your seat before end of January 2014. Register here, select the training (iOS beginner or advanced) and type the voucher code in the comment section.

As you might know, I am very fond of developing apps for the iOS platform. I started back in mid-2009 by trying to create an app for the Dutch Lowlands festival but I unfortunately failed to make the app a reality. I didn't care because now I learned how to write iPhone apps!

After that I never stopped trying out new app ideas in my spare time and occasionally blogging about it. In 2010, I created an app to use to communicate with friends using our custom forum-like website which was called 'Yert'.

And later, March 2011, I created an app in my spare time together with my uncle (Jos Jong) and brother (Jim van Zummeren) which turned out to be quite profitable: Easy Calendar. I learned the most creating this app. I also developed some iOS apps for clients of Trifork, for example I made the love to load app for The New Motion and an app that allows doctors to log their hours for GeriMedica: Ysis Mobiel.

Oh, and I almost forgot: Learn to write with Tracy! An iPad app that makes learning how to write for children more fun and thus effective.

Next to the apps that made it into the App Store, I worked on a bunch of other ideas in my spare time that unfortunately never saw the light of day. But I learned from them every time. I want to share some tips & tricks with you all, which I learned over time. I want to talk about what tools I use nowadays, what frameworks I recommend and the different ways of distributing an app.Read the rest of this entry »

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The content on this blog is developed mostly by our own developers. It contains a selection of best practices, trends and technical information on different open source technologies. Our blog is where we can share our experiences with technologies we are experimenting with, advancing with and more often than not indulging in.
In true open source community style, we don't hold back and we share code snippets, screen shots and provide insight wherever we can. We particularly enjoy setting up a dialogue with our readers and often there is also a thread of question and answers in the blogs too. Our blogs are not however all about just the technical successes but also our less successful efforts too ;-)

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In many of our blogs, you'll find we endeavour to take you on a journey of our thought process. This means some of our blogs can often become epics and have a whole series associated with them.
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